Tawni Tidwell, PhD, TMD, is a biocultural anthropologist and Tibetan medical doctor. Her research facilitates bridges across the Western scientific tradition and Tibetan medical and contemplative traditions along with their attendant epistemologies and ontologies. She is currently a Research Associate at the Center for Healthy Minds of University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is Principal Investigator for the Varela Study on Examining Individual Differences in Contemplative Practice Response (ExamID-Biome) that assesses variation in meditation outcomes as it relates to gut microbiome profiles and Tibetan medical constitutional characteristics. She is also Project Lead for the Field Study of the Physiology of Meditation Practitioners and the Tukdam Meditative State (FMed) guided by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in collaboration with Tibetan Buddhist monastic and Tibetan medical colleagues in India as well as the Russian Academy of Sciences. Her published works focus on modes of embodiment and entrainment through practice, diagnostic/treatment paradigms, Tibetan medical conceptions of cancer and metabolic disorders, and transforming toxins into medicines in Tibetan pharmacology. She maintains a private clinical practice in Madison, Wisconsin.
